


dovetail joints and other tests of tensile strength

by bloodscout



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (mostly), Alice "Daisy" Tonner With Crutches, Autistic Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Canon Compliant, Disabled Author, Disabled Character, EDS!Jon, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, Gen, Insecurity, Jon has EDS, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Alice "Daisy" Tonner Are Best Friends, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist Wears a Skirt, Minor Injuries, Missing Scene, Pining, Season/Series 04, autistic author
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25374649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodscout/pseuds/bloodscout
Summary: “Hurt very much?”That surprised him. If she had asked him the same question last year, he wouldn’t have answered. He wouldn’t have told her that when she kidnapped him from Mike Crew’s house, she dislocated his wrist and it took three weeks to get back to normal. He wouldn’t have told her exactly how easy it was the pull his leg out of its socket, that he had a slipped disc that made his vision go white when he bent over in the wrong way. It would have been out of self-preservation, of course. The Daisy-that-was didn’t need more information on how to hurt him. To be fair, the Daisy-that-was wouldn’t have asked in the first place. Not in a way that sounded like she cared.Friends, then.
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Alice "Daisy" Tonner
Comments: 15
Kudos: 204





	dovetail joints and other tests of tensile strength

**Author's Note:**

> warnings for discussions of ableism, a description of a minor self-injury (the paragraph starting with "Jon held out his hands"). standard not about autistic jon that it isn't directly stated but i couldnt write him as allistic if my life depended on it.
> 
> i was going to write a fic that was just me projecting my EDS onto Jon but then I got distracted by Daisy Tonner. eternal thanks to my brother [transscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TransScribe/pseuds/TransScribe) for editing even tho he has not listened to a single episode of TMA

Jon deposited two wheat packs, lightly steaming, on the floor beside his… Friend? Comrade-in-arms? His co-worker. Colleague. Beside Daisy. He wriggled around until he found a comfortable position on his chair, drawing a few clicks from his settling joints. With a murmured thanks, Daisy laid the wheat packs on the backs of her thighs. They cramped up sometimes, though not exclusively because she was less diligent with her physical therapy than she led Basira to believe. At this point in time, she lay belly-down on the carpet, and twisted her arms behind herself to reach her aching legs.

“Your arm shouldn’t do that.” Jon noted, almost automatically.

Daisy turned her head towards him. The pile of the carpet had left little red impressions on her cheek. “Do what?”

Jon demonstrated, stretching his arm too far behind his back and wiggling his hand. Daisy copied the motion.

“Huh.” she breathed. “Maybe it’s— Dunno. A… Hunt thing?” She said the word haltingly, as if she thought something would happen from just saying it aloud.

“Don’t think so. Just. Bones? Well, joints. And, uh, collagen.”

Daisy hummed. Talking to her was like a crash course in understanding facial expressions, except this time no one made him sit on his hands. Her pauses were usually long enough for him to decode them, either way.

“Didn’t take biology in the academy.”

“Hmm. Ah, and… After?”

It wasn’t really a genuine question. It seemed like the right moment for a joke. Daisy seemed like she enjoyed the occasional bit of gallows humour. They could make jokes about these things. His eyes swept over the place where Daisy’s shiny new crutches and his well-worn AFOs rested against the wall. Even if they weren’t exactly friends, he would wager that surviving a domain of cosmic horror merited a bit of camaraderie.

Daisy’s eyes flicked to his face as soon as the words had left his mouth, searching. He was momentarily concerned he had made a grave miscalculation of the situation. Then, Daisy didn’t quite laugh, but her tongue swiped over her teeth in a way that Jon was fairly sure meant she was trying not to smile.

“Don’t need to know how a heart works to stop it beating.”

Jon bit down on his lip to contain the joy that bubbled up. “I suppose not. But your shoulder moves too far. Hypermobile. Uh, over-flexible.”

Daisy nodded, insomuch as she could with her face pressed into the floor. “I've always been flexible. Gymnastics as a kid. Some ballet, but,” she thumped out a little beat on the floor with her fingers. “No rhythm.”

Jon laughed at that. It was quick, but bright, as if he was worried he would be caught. A memory surfaced, unbidden, of Tim and him bent close together at some otherwise uneventful company party; giggling about the distinctly melanin-deprived dance moves of their Research workmates. They had stumbled onto the dance floor, to “show the gweilos how to really dance”, and Jon had hurt his knee so badly that Tim had had to carry him up the stairs to his flat. Jon had complained profusely, because really, Tim, he would be fine to get home on his own. Tim had countered that it was purely selfish, because this was the closest he would ever get to getting Jon into bed with him, and it was just too cruel to deny him that.

“You can do it too, though. The shoulder thing.” Daisy noted.

Jon did it again, as if he might have lost the ability in the last minute or so. It was starting to ache. He might have to dredge up another wheat pack from his desk drawers.

“I mean, I knew you had disability stuff, but I don’t know what…” She trailed off, and Jon knew she would let him drop it if he wanted. They were good at that, about-turn changes in subject when the conversation skirted too close to something raw and throbbing.

“Mm. It’s called, uh, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome.” There was a brief pause as he allowed himself to consult the Eye about whether he had pronounced it correctly. He had. Small blessings.

“And again in English?” Daisy prompted.

“It just means I’m hypermobile all over. Hands, feet, hips,”

That sounded like bragging. Was he bragging? It had always felt special, to be able to bend further than his classmates. It had been his fun thing in university, a strange oddity that helped drunk people remember him at parties. Maybe he was boring Daisy though; talking too much about something that she had already said she didn’t know very much about. Jon’s fingers found the hem of his heavy corduroy skirt. He began to run his thumb over the ribbed fabric, soothing his anxious pulse.

He hedged a bet. “Also that my joints dislocate. Sometimes. On occasion.”

Daisy’s eyes shone at that, and he knew he had tailored well to the audience. In university, he had grown intimately familiar with the different reactions that a dislocation could garner. Disgust was a big one, and always made a little twist of shame curl around his stomach. Good practice, he supposed, for how people looked at him following the Prentiss attacks. Pity was a close second, which just made him angry. After a while, he had just stopped mentioning them, explaining away aches and weakness as sprains and pulled muscles.

But his favourite people — Georgie, most notably; but a handful of others both before and since — were fascinated. They weren’t callous about it, didn’t turn Jon into some kind of spectacle; but even as he twisted his body into unnatural and objectively grotesque shapes, they wanted to know more.

“Really? Which ones?” Daisy sounded as if Jon had just told her he could deadlift double his bodyweight.

“Well, um. Most of them.”

Jon held out his hands, then grabbed his right pinkie in his left fist and yanked it to the side. He held it up, showing how the finger bent 45 degrees from the second knuckle. He bit down on his lip as he popped it back into place, unable to suppress his jump at the sharp lance of pain.

“Weird.” She licked her teeth again, but her smile peeked through.

“Quite.” He rubbed his finger a little. Showing off was perhaps not the wisest idea, especially now that no one was around to carry heavy mugs of tea to his desk.

“Hurt very much?”

That surprised him. If she had asked him the same question last year, he wouldn’t have answered. He wouldn’t have told her that when she kidnapped him from Mike Crew’s house, she dislocated his wrist and it took three weeks to get back to normal. He wouldn’t have told her exactly how easy it was to pull his leg out of its socket, that he had a slipped disc that made his vision go white when he bent over in the wrong way. It would have been out of self-preservation, of course. The Daisy-that-was didn’t need more information on how to hurt him. To be fair, the Daisy-that-was wouldn’t have asked in the first place. Not in a way that sounded like she cared.

Friends, then.

“A bit,” was what he settled on. He had never been especially adept at quantifying his pain levels. The dangers of being raised by an elderly woman, he supposed. “Probably shouldn’t be doing party tricks like that. It’s not, uh, exactly recommended.”

“Does your PT tell you off too?” Daisy asked, commiserating.

Jon shook his head. He hadn’t had one since Prentiss, and certainly not since the coma. Explaining his perfectly human abnormalities was enough without also having to explain how he had woken up after being clinically dead for six entire months, thank you very much.

“Don’t want to explain…” An expansive gesture, to which Daisy nodded in agreement.

It had been one of the reasons he had gone into academia. Of course, the biggest factor was the books — reading for hours on end, and getting paid to do so, was an offer too good to pass by — but the mostly sedentary nature of the work held a significant appeal. Needless to say, his body was under significantly more strain than your standard archival job.

“Right bastards, anyway. Basira thinks so too, I think. I went to see some guy called Jared and she wouldn’t even let me in the building before she’d given him a dressing down.”

Jon couldn’t bite back his smile at that. “Perhaps just an unfortunate name. Jared Hopworth was the Avatar who, um,” he waved a hand towards the truly macabre paperweight he was yet to find an appropriate place for, “took my ribs.”

Daisy’s face twisted in disgust. “Wish you wouldn’t keep showing me that thing.”

Jon pulled his skirt taut over his knees, indignant. “Hey! ‘That thing’ got us out of the Buried!”

Daisy scoffed at that, propping herself up on her elbows so she could look at him better. Daisy only had an inch or two on Jon, but she seemed to tower over him regardless.

“You still think it was that piddling bit of bone that got us out?” Daisy asked, thoroughly unimpressed.

Jon frowned. “Of course it was. I could feel it.”

Daisy rolled her eyes. “Not the whole time, you couldn’t. When we got out, it wasn’t your rib that was making all that noise.”

Jon scraped his hair out of his eyes. He had lost his hair tie some time ago and he couldn’t keep it out of his face. “I thought… Well, I assumed I had made that happen.” he admitted, inexplicably sheepish. “Summoned them, maybe.”

Now that Daisy had said it, it was all too obvious to Jon that his rib wasn’t enough to be an anchor. His ribs did a poor enough job of staying attached to him when they were actually inside his body. Not to mention that he had jumped immediately to cutting off one of his fingers. They had never worked particularly well, he had figured he could stand to lose one or two.

“God, no wonder you’ve got that me-against-the-world thing going on. It was Martin, you idiot.”

Daisy might as well have slapped him, the way that comment threw him. “Martin?”

“ _Men_.” she groused, dropping down onto the floor again. “What, you thought Basira would have piled dozens of tape recorders around a coffin for you? Or Melanie? It wasn’t the bloody tapes that brought you back, Jon.”

Jon could only shake his head. He had no idea what this meant. What he was supposed to do now? If it wasn’t the tapes that brought him back, then that meant it had been—

That it was—

“Well, shit.”

“Idiot.” Daisy teased, though there was a softness to her eyes.

Jon nodded, eyes fixed on the stippled plaster wall. “Apparently so.”

When Daisy rolled onto her back, the wheat packs made soft thunks as they hit the ground. “Oh, stop moping. He’s alive, you’re alive, one day you’ll run off together and live in an idyllic little village in the South Downs. Stop worrying and let him do his job.” Jon was about to protest, but her glare shut him up quick enough. “Until then, come get Thai with me. I’ll help you put on your weird socks.”

“They’re not socks, Daisy, they are literally made of plastic.”

Daisy threw a wheat pack at him, but it sailed over his shoulder without him needing to dodge. It was obvious that she wasn’t trying to hit him, but he grinned like he had evaded her assault anyway.

“Whatever, do you want my help or not?”

He hadn’t wanted help for a very long time. He had resented every shout at lunch, every kind word, every cup of tea that had been sent his way. He didn’t want to be in debt to anyone; but feeling guilty about small kindnesses didn’t stop them from happening. He had saved Daisy’s life — more than even that, if he were being brutally honest — and she didn’t act as if she owed him a thing. He didn’t expect anything from her, either. He had saved her because he wanted to; there was nothing to be repaid. It was just friendship, freely given. A hand reaching out for the other to grasp.

Jon stuck out his leg. “Get on with it, then.”

**Author's Note:**

> crutch user Daisy rights!!!!  
> pls come yell at me about the magnus archives on tumblr at [sansculotted](sansculotted.tumblr.com)


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